Rove: Nevada Win Indicative of Obama's Troubles

Former top presidential adviser Karl Rove said Wednesday as impressive as businessman Bob Turner’s win in the special election in New York City to fill disgraced former Rep, Anthony Weiner’s seat was for the Republicans, the Nevada victory is even more indicative of the problems President Barack Obama will face in the 2012 election.

“As important as New York’s victory is, the Nevada one in some ways is even more disturbing for Democrats,” Rove told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “Because look, they are already writing off, [New York] they’re saying Democratic Assemblyman [David] Weprin in New York was a lousy candidate and this issue of Israel is not going to be present everywhere in every race.”

Rove said the Democratic establishment is blaming the New York loss on Weprin’s vote for gay marriage, Obama’s comments on Israel, and Turner’s support from prominent Jewish-American Democrats — including former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

The former adviser to President George W. Bush said Mark Amodei’s resounding defeat of Kate Marshall in Nevada, shows the growing strength of the GOP.

“Now, you can’t get Ed Koch in every district to campaign for a Republican — but in Nevada, think about this, Sean: Nevada 2 [state’s 2nd congressional district] was carried by John McCain in the 2008 election by 88 votes . . . and in this election, the Democrats had a candidate they thought was picture perfect,” Rove said. “[Marshall] was great at executing the playbook — ran an ad saying that her Republican opponent Mark Amodei wanted to ‘end Medicare to pay for tax breaks for millionaires.’

“And he won by 28,000 votes — I mean, think about that swing — he had a 20 point, 22 point victory in a district that was essentially 49-49 in 2008 in the presidential race,” he said. “They don’t have issues like the president’s policy on Israel dominating in a district with a lot of Orthodox Jews — all the excuses they gave for New York, not present in Nevada — and yet they got creamed.”

Hannity noted polls show Obama’s support is waning in California among his Democratic base, and if the president can’t win that state, and has trouble in New York, his chances of re-election are greatly diminished.

“Well, look, he will get back the Democrats — but he’s not going to get the independents — I wrote my column for tomorrow morning’s Wall Street Journal on exactly this topic,” Rove said. “What he’s going to do is he’s going to feel like he’s got to go left and become even more liberal and say even more aggressive things like he said in the speech last week when he literally called the Republican opposition un-American and grossly distorted what they were advocating — it is not going to work.”